Rapid isolation and collection of microorganisms, such as pathogenic bacteria, from biological samples is an important aspect to clinical evaluation and testing. Accurate diagnosis and pathogen monitoring may involve obtaining a sample from a subject, for example, in the form of sputum, blood, tissue, urine, cerebrospinal fluid or other biological specimen. Extraction techniques may then be used to isolate and concentrate pathogens from the specimen. In some instances, intact pathogens may be desirably collected for culture or analysis while other approaches may enrich for nucleic acids, proteins or other biological indicators used to detect or identify the presence of a pathogen or infectious agent within the sample.
Conventional methods for collecting microorganisms from a biological sample are typically slow and lack the ability to readily isolate and separate small quantities of pathogens from larger sample volumes in which they are contained. Blood-based processing techniques may require centrifugation and withdrawal of sub-fractions from the sample to obtain crude pathogen isolates. In some conventional processing workflows, technicians must work with open sample containers and perform transfer operations manually creating potential biological and exposure hazards.
A particular problem exists when attempting to extract and analyze pathogens from biological samples where the overall amount of the sample is large or where the number of pathogens present is very small. In such circumstances, conventional processing techniques may not be able to efficiently concentrate and retain the microorganisms in a manner suitable for rapid identification. In these and other regards, the present disclosure provides significant advances in sample processing and analysis techniques that facilitate and improve microorganism isolation and identification.